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Posted on 07 January 2012 |
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The fury of the powerless
Nilim Dutta & Shehla Rashid on why Kashmiris are boiling over power shortage
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Illustration: Tim Tim Rose |
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AFTER THREE long summers of discontent, Jammu and Kashmir was in relative calm in 2011. The summer of 2010 was particularly difficult. The death of Tufail Mattoo, a 17-year-old youth, on being hit by a teargas shell fired by security forces unleashed a storm of protests and pitched street battles between security forces and the protesters leading to another 126 civilian deaths in police firing. In the months of June and July 2010, there were 872 incidents of stone-pelting in which 1,456 police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were injured. Widespread arson and destruction of government property also occurred. The security forces had to dig in and slowly bring the situation under control by mass arrests, many probably teenagers. It would be natural to assume that such arrests only increased the seething resentment, even if it was inevitable. The only positive outcome probably was New Delhi’s appointment of a three-member team of interlocutors on Kashmir, who have since submitted their report, even though scepticism about real change is widespread.
Such being the circumstance, wisdom would demand that the minimum the government of India and the government of Jammu and Kashmir should do to sustain this tenuous peace would be to not precipitate a new situation, which would either ignite a new fire or stoke anew an old ember to turn it into another winter of discontent. Wisdom would also demand that the bare minimum the people of Jammu and Kashmir desire of their governments, which may be far less than what they deserve, be sincerely delivered to them. It is in this context that the abysmal electricity shortage in the state and denial of even this basic amenity to citizens assumes serious significance. With most rural areas remaining without electricity for up to 18 hours a day and even Srinagar being subject to 12 hours of power cuts, it doesn’t need clairvoyant to guess that sooner or later people would take to the streets to protest and the resultant clashes could become another thorn in the effort to sustain the peace. Those closely observing the situation were apprehensive about such a situation and unfortunately that has happened.
On Monday, Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) troopers guarding the premises of the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), a public sector corporate entity under the central government, at Boniyar village in Baramulla district, opened fire on protesters demanding the power situation be improved as many of them felt cheated by the denial of electricity after they had acceded land for the NHPC project on promises of 24-hour power supply. A 22-year-old man identified as Muhammad Altaf Sood died in the incident and two others sustained bullet injuries. In a swift bid to quell protest from spreading after this incident, the Jammu and Kashmir Police promptly arrested five CISF troopers and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the guilty shall be punished and they shall not enjoy immunity under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) against prosecution in civil courts. But the damage had been done, and it is not difficult to see why.
First, because the NHPC has come to be seen as one of the major reasons for the state’s abysmal power situation for not only having an exploitative stranglehold on the state’s hydroelectricity-generating assets but also in the patently perfidious nature these were probably gained and have been sought to be retained. NHPC generates much of the 2,556MW of the hydroelectricity produced in the state but offers a paltry 12 per cent of free power to the state and sells 88 per cent to the northern grid at lavish profits. Any power the state has to buy back from the NHPC has to be done at a premium. On top of such an exploitative power sharing agreement, NHPC now stands accused of resorting to shockingly fraudulent means to acquire the land for at least one of the projects as well as to retain ownership of all of them in perpetuity, even though the Prime Minister’s economic adviser C Rangarajan had categorically suggested transfer of assets to the state. That NHPC is currently working on 14 more power projects there with a total capacity of 3,445MW with perhaps the same exploitative arrangements only contributes to the growing resentment. In this context, the death of a civilian in protest against near denial of electricity and in the hands of troopers deployed at a NHPC facility immediately assumes larger implications.
SECOND, REGARDLESS of how the incident may have occurred, the ominous implication is that in Kashmir, every new killing is seen in the backdrop of previous civilian casualties since the past brutalities have remained beyond the pale of justice. This would certainly not be seen as an isolated incident but as yet another in the progression of injustice being meted out to Kashmir and Kashmiris.
But it is not only in Jammu and Kashmir that the NHPC finds itself in the eye of a storm. In Assam, an indefinite blockade has started from December 1 to prevent NHPC from transporting construction material and vital equipment to its Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project in the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border area. Just when Assam has limped back to a modicum of peace from three decades of debilitating insurgency, the centre’s lack of foresight appears to nullify the dividends of peace. What is even more ominous is that with the Arunachal Pradesh government strongly backing the continuation of the construction, and the anti-dam protesters in Assam steadfastly determined to oppose it, this can soon accelerate into a larger conflict with ugly consequences. The inability of the Indian state to govern becomes painfully apparent from the frequency with which its citizens have to take to the streets to vent their discontent. The failure is compounded and exposed when the state, in a bid to exercise control, unleashes brutalities on its protesting citizenry, quite often on even those who are protesting in democratic non violent ways. In most police forces across India, capacities and inclination for non lethal crowd control appears non existent. But in conflict zones of Jammu and Kashmir and the northeast, the threshold for such brutalities, of resorting to the bullet when teargas shells would have sufficed, is shockingly low. But these are not the only concerns. One needs to also question the central government on why it is reluctant to examine NHPC as the root of major unrests in strategic areas of not only in Jammu and Kashmir but also in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
Nilim Dutta is the executive director of the Strategic Research and Analysis Organisation, Guwahati.
nilimdutta@gmail.com
Shehla Rashid is a corporate software engineer from Srinagar.
@ShehlaRashid
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